


The Musicology of Empire

by yhlee (etothey)



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Music, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21944338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/pseuds/yhlee
Summary: Jedao and Jedao Two discuss musicology, among other things.
Comments: 25
Kudos: 75
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Musicology of Empire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redsixwing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redsixwing/gifts).



"We suck at this," Jedao Two said gloomily as he paced in the halls of Jedao's mind.

"We do," Jedao agreed. He played back another example of post-Liozh music. Despite all the analysis in the musicology text, damned if he could tell the difference between that and the stuff his mother had liked to play in the house. Music had never been his strong point, as she'd liked to point out.

Jedao occupied two spaces simultaneously. The first was the ordinary physical realm, in which he was closeted in this swank hotel room. (Too bad the provided whiskey tasted terrible.) Cheris was off doing some hideously incomprehensible research involving something something homological conjectures something something commutative algebra. "The commute to that university library is going to be horrible," Jedao had agreed, and Cheris had bared her teeth at him and told him not to bother trying.

The second was the dreamspace where he and Two both existed while sharing the moth-derived body that Kujen had given them. Jedao had ceded the furnishings to Two's imagination. Two, it turned out, either had a taste for decadent carpet, cloudwood furniture, and eyeless statuary, or couldn't imagine anything else after his stint with Kujen.

Two manifested, here, as a gawky teenage boy whose hair needed a trim, all limbs and angles. His red cadet uniform was too short at the wrists. Jedao looked at him and felt an insuperable sense of distance. Had he ever been that _young_?

"Didn't you say our father was a musician?" Two asked after a moment as, in realspace, Jedao pored over the text's explanation of time signatures in the heptarchate. "Why didn't you ask him for lessons?"

Jedao smiled tolerantly. "We only met him a couple of times." _How much of your memories did Kujen take away?_ Jedao wondered, not for the first time; but he wasn't going to ask outright, and Two would tell him in his own time, if ever. "It's true that our mother found it terribly disappointing that we couldn't carry a tune in a bucket."

Two flung himself into an chair and tapped his fingers on its arm, brooding. "Too bad we can't look him up and have _him_ figure out how to transcribe moth-speech."

Jedao's smile twisted. "Well, a few centuries have passed."

Two's shoulders drooped. "I keep forgetting about that. How is it that I keep forgetting about that?" He hesitated, then added, "Did he ever find out what we, er, did?"

Meaning the Hellspin Massacre. "It's not 'we,'" Jedao said, looking up in dreamspace to meet Two's eyes. They were wide and uncertain, and agonizingly vulnerable in a way that Jedao hadn't allowed himself to be in several lifetimes. "That was me. Not you."

"We're one person now," Two said, his voice brittle. "Besides, I've--I've committed my share of crimes."

Someday Jedao would get Two to tell him about them. Jedao had ascertained early on that he had easy access to Two's memories and experiences. It had saved him and Cheris several times, when they didn't have time for a briefing. (Was that the right word? No matter.) At the same time, Jedao had determined that Two couldn't poke around in _his_ mind, which was perhaps for the best. Unfair though it was, Jedao didn't think Two was adequately prepared for the sheer amount of trauma Jedao had in his past; might never be ready, in fact, and that was fine.

Jedao could have pressed, but he chose not to. Instead, in dreamspace, he rested a careful hand on Two's shoulder. Especially here, he always telegraphed his motions, always made his intent clear, so that Two could accept or reject the gesture, whatever felt right to him.

Two shuddered, then relaxed into the touch. It was pitifully obvious how much Two wanted a father, or an older brother, someone to watch over him. Jedao didn't think he was the best person for the task, exactly, considering his past, but given the circumstances he was all Two had.

Kujen had fucked Two up but good, that much was clear, even before anything else happened. And Jedao knew--how he knew--that there was no fast way to heal that kind of damage.

So he played music, and read music theory that made about as much sense as the remainder theorem, and let Two approach difficult topics edgewise.

"Why three plus four, and not three plus two plus two?" Two wondered as he looked through Jedao's eyes at the textbook.

"That was one school, apparently," Jedao said, willing to go along with the change in topic. "The Literalist school, which wrote in 7/4 time. The fundamentals in rhythm are two and three. Two for two feet marching, and three for waltzes, I suppose. 7/4 is hell for partnered dancing, though, so the Populist school would write sets of pieces. Most usually it'd be one in 3/4, one in 4/4, to get to seven. 2/4 apparently isn't good for much but marches? 4/4 made more interesting dances easier."

Two blinked. "Did you dance often?"

Jedao gave Two's shoulder one last avuncular rub and then folded himself into a seat across from Two's. "It was the done thing for officers back then," he said. "And, I mean, we're good at athletics. I'm not mathematical"--Cheris tried to be nice about it, but even she had limits--"but I can find the beat. We're good at dancing."

"I never had the opportunity," Two said, a little wistfully. He hummed a phrase from one of their conversations with the moths. "What about that? Does that sound more heptarchate or more hexarchate?"

"You'd know better than I do," Jedao said, shrugging. "Moths like communicating over harmonies and my ear is just not that good. When we talk to them, it's really your ability we're drawing on, not any musicality on my part."

"I must have learned the language at some point," Two said, "but I can't remember that. It's locked up and far away." His eyes clouded.

 _Locked up and far away_ was a great description for large chunks of Jedao's existence, but he forebore from saying so. "They do seem to use more notes, don't they?" Jedao said, to distract Two from the upsetting topic. "I was expecting music to have changed in horrible ways after the Liozh were wiped out, but no: the same old pentatonic stuff."

"Yes, you'll have to explain that to me," Two said, willing to be diverted. "Wouldn't it make more sense to use seven or six notes?"

"Apparently not as aesthetically pleasing," Jedao said, "and I'll note that almost all the extremely verbose essays on this topic are by Andan. The heptarchate workaround was seven 'elements': the five pentatonic notes, the pitchless note to represent percussion elements, and the rest or lacuna. Because changing an entire musical tradition is apparently a pain in the ass"--although it made for entertainingly vicious infighting, once you got past the dreary theory bits and started in on the _ad hominem_ footnotes--"they simply theorized away the rest as an element, and said that properly it was only the five plus one notes. It's a whole lot of sophistry in the service of music, I suppose."

Two shook his head. "I'm so glad I don't have to worry about this stuff," he admitted. "I just want to know how to write down moth-speech! That's all."

"We'd really have more luck if we'd looked at musical anthropology," Jedao agreed, "but I couldn't figure out how to hack into the classified stuff on heretical musical systems. We'll ask one of the servitors the next time they stop by to check in."

"I want to see us dancing," Two said suddenly. "To old music or new, I don't care."

Jedao grinned. "I could probably get Cheris to help us demonstrate." Meaning that Cheris was going to give him that flat, deadly stare she'd perfected in the past several months, but he wasn't fazed by such a little thing. Especially when he was a _ninefox_. "Besides, after whatever the hell it is she's researching, I'm sure she could use a break."

Two smiled at him, and something in Jedao eased. He might be an arch-traitor and mass murderer, but perhaps he could do some small good in the world even so.


End file.
